Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice - Paperback

by Ganga White (Author), Sting (Foreword by), Mark Schlenz (Introduction by)

Yoga Beyond Belief offers a unique vision of contemporary yoga. It integrates scientific and practical approaches providing a much-needed integrative perspective that complements existing yoga books for all levels and styles of yoga students. Serving up a collection of valuable insights gleaned from a lifetime of exploration, practice, study, and teaching by one of America's pioneering and leading teachers of yoga, the book assists readers in making sense of the many discordant claims and teaching techniques that currently exist in the yoga world, freeing readers to pursue their own individual paths of yoga and personal practice. This is an essential text and reference for all yoga practitioners.

The book first sets a context for an open-minded and evolutionary approach to yoga practice, and then explains the core principles of the many branches of yoga. A clear foundation is given for how the physical practices of yoga work to produce remarkable results of health and well being. The chapter Injury, Pain, and Healing shows how to prevent injuries and how to heal injuries should they occur. The reader is given a wealth of sophisticated of tools, insights, and anecdotes gleaned from a lifetime of practice and teaching to develop, hone, and tune his or her personal yoga approach. This book makes yoga come alive for the reader.

The book concludes by going beyond the physical aspects to the heart of yoga. It illuminates and gives insight into the discovery of non-dogmatic forms and evolutionary approaches to meditation and spirituality. It presents a clear argument showing the pitfalls of regimented systems and how to make everything in daily life part of yoga practice and spiritual development.

Ganga White gives us his unique and creative perspectives on a time-tested discipline for a healthy and vital life. Entertaining and thoroughly readable, this book offers a coherent explication of yoga, its philosophy and practice. White's integrative views will inspire beginners and accomplished yogis to trust their inner wisdom and creatively reassess their practice. He is a great storyteller and gives us his personal and creative perspective, breathing fresh air into an ancient discipline. Yoga Beyond Belief offers an original, integrative approach to body, mind, and spirit that is practical, inspiring, and full of valuable insights to enliven and inform anyone's yoga practice.

Author Biography

Ganga White, referred to as a "pioneer of yoga" by Yoga Journal, has been teaching, innovating, and promulgating yoga since 1967-nearly forty years. He has led international yoga organizations, established yoga centers in major cities that have been emulated the world over, and he is a leader on the forefront of the wave of yoga in America. White is founder of the world renowned White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, California, which offers programs internationally. Situated on forty acres, the residential retreat and primary teaching institute offers yoga workshops, teacher training, and advanced study to students and teachers from around the world. White has extensive training and experience in the field of yoga combined with education in science, physics, and electronics. He brings a unique, East/West perspective to yoga, meditation, and spirituality.

Ganga White introduced Flow Yoga in the 1970's and it is now one of the most popular forms practiced around the world. In 1980, his text Double Yoga introduced his innovation of partner yoga, now practiced worldwide. With his wife, Tracey Rich, he co-created Total Yoga-The Flow Series videos, which are international #1 best sellers with sales of over 1.8 million copies.

White brings a broad, modern perspective to the teachings of yoga. Although he is extensively trained in traditional yoga and has a Sanskrit name and titles, White is an evolutionary and critical thinker who shows his students how to grow beyond tradition into their own freedom and understanding making their yoga, practice, and their spirituality uniquely their own. He and his wife currently direct the renowned White Lotus Foundation and lecture and teach internationally.

Foreword by Sting:
World renowned musician Sting has been practicing yoga for more than 15 years. He and his wife, Trudie Styler, rely on yoga to help maintain their well-being and the high energy pace of their lives. Along with Trudie and a Brazilian Indian, Sting started the Rainforest Foundation in 1989 to help save the rainforests. He lives in England.